images next to ads question

[mason]

I know that YPN states in their TOS that they don't like their ads next to images without separation, but does google also say this? I looked at the TOS and didn't see it, but I want to make sure.

plus I see a lot of sites doing it so I'm guesing it's fine? I currently have ads without lines seperating the images from content.

 

[Jdog]

Google doesn't mind as long as the images are somewhat vague. I throw a 1 px border because I'm paranoid. If you are really worried you could e-mail them to make sure you are ok.

 

[logiik]

I emailed Google awhile back concerning that and this is what they said:

Thanks for your email regarding your Ads. In general, you're welcome to
place images near the Google ads on your site. However, some
implementations are not permitted by our program policies, so we ask that
you exercise some caution when choosing or placing the images.

To be specific, we ask that publishers not place misleading images near
Google ads or use images that appear to be directly associated with the
advertisers and their offerings. Such images may draw undue attention to
the ads and prompt unintentional user clicks, thereby artificially
inflating advertiser costs. As you may know, drawing undue attention to
ads is in violation of our program policies, so we're unable to approve
the placement of all images next to Google ads.

If you choose to experiment with placing images directly next to the ads,
I'd strongly encourage you to maintain a visible border around the ad
units to reduce the possibility of confusing users.

 

[mason]

wow how vague is that?

 

[stickycarrots]

I'm doing it with clicksor...wonder if they care...

 

[MisterX]

Here's a funny story - there was something funky happening with my account (later turned out to be related to issues with subdomains & reports), so I mailed them about the pics to see if that was somehow the reason why they weren't counting clicks from some subdomains.

It turns out that it wasn't related, but the guy answering my mail told me that my pics were misleading - someone might think they're related to the ads - and therefore against the tos, although I was using the standard adsense beautifier template, with both borders around the images and a line separating them from the ads. So I had to change the ads from the template I see on dozens of other sites into something less effective and with a lower ctr.

The moral of the story is, if everybody else is using pics with borders & not getting banned for it (and I think they'll send you a warning before they ban you for that) and you've made a system with it that works for you, you might want to wait for Google to contact you about it (which they probably won't do), instead of contacting them first and forcing them to say "it's misleading", while they'd let it slide if it wasn't mentioned.

 

[Jan]

I am a visual person and am an amateur photographer so I was very happy when I found this link that makes it easy to put photos with ads.

It's your site, so you decide if its compliant, but it looks like they are.